With the beautiful and respectful Ayase showing a drastically different side of her and Kyousuke worrying about her friendship with Kirino ending more than she was, I would’ve thought that receiving a swift kick to the groin was a good sign for Kyousuke to start rethinking why he’s going to such lengths for his little sister.

It’s kind of hard to believe it’s been eight months since the release of the first episode of Gundam series that marks the long-awaited return to the Universal Century timeline, but Sunrise sure made it well worth the wait. With each episode being an hour long and production quality that doesn’t disappoint one bit, this is more akin to a six-part movie series like Break Blade and worthy of a theatrical release if the story is broken up accordingly.

Compared to the first season, this sequel appears to be taking off much quicker on the relevant story side of things as the focus shifts back to the mysteries surrounding Synapse. The man of the (half) hour is none other than Eishirou, who plunges back into a Dive Game and makes his proclamation against the Master of the Sky. Oh now it’s on!

There’s a whole mess of confusion within me from watching this half. Is it the urge to be disgusted from an episode devoted to boogers? That said boogers are so abundant, and shooting everywhere, or that they look exactly like Stocking’s sweets? How about that Stocking eats said sweets, but soon eats those boogers too, but the cognitive dissonance of seeing it still as a sweet, but knowing it’s a booger just rips the mind apart?

The childhood friend arc has arrived, and with it a much cuter Rihoko than all the previous ones had me believe. I guess it’s true what they say about how one’s perception of someone can drastically change once you get to know them. As this is only the first episode, I’m nowhere near jumping on the Rihoko bandwagon just yet, but can definitely see some of her cuter charm points.

As a treat for manga readers, the trend these days seems to be bundling Original Animation DVDs (OADs) with volume releases that animate a few parts of the original source material. In the case of ones that had already seen an adaptation like Yozakura Quartet, these bonus episodes also tend to please the purist crowd, who strongly feel that the anime should be an exact moving and talking version of what they read.

There’s gamer pride over maintaining one’s reputation and then there’s obsessive compulsive disorder. In Keima’s case, the line between the two blurs badly when’s he’s faced with the buggiest romantic simulation game ever and still tries to get through it. While it wasn’t quite Endless Eight, there was a lot of looping going on as well. For those with traumatizing memories of that Suzumiya Haruhi debacle, don’t worry, it was actually funny here.

Compared to last week, this episode was a lot cuter than it was funny and had some slightly unsettling moments to boot. However, by the time the third skit rolled around (with gigantic mechanical Ika Musume heads and all), the laughs were aplenty again thanks to Ika’s tunnel vision perception of what her squid species’ looks like. i.e. A squid hat with blue tentacles. de geso!

I don’t know what the heck a “Sky Love Hurricane Kiss” is, but if Yukimura is the one delivering it, I’m guessing some air time is involved, much like when she busted out some master samurai abilities of her own.

Summary:
After defeating most of the captain and Vizards, Aizen states that he won’t kill them, but will let them watch the battle as his plans unfold. Yamamoto then releases his shikai, but Aizen says it is too late.